


Orange Colored Sky

by Eloarei



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, Color Blindness, F/M, Gen, Retelling, romantic superstition, waxing poetic about colors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28444056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: Like everyone else in the vault, Addisson is born unable to see colors. But unlike all her friends, the affliction persists into adulthood, until she finds herself on a quest in the wasteland, where questions abound and answers come slowly.
Relationships: Fawkes & Lone Wanderer, Fawkes/Female Lone Wanderer, Fawkes/Lone Wanderer, James & Lone Wanderer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Orange Colored Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to be writing something else, so naturally this happened. I'd never written a colorblind soulmate AU, so I thought I'd fiddle with the idea. It's nothing masterful, but it was fun to write. 
> 
> Not related to my other LW/Fawkes fics; I just used Addisson because she's my favorite player character.

The song "Orange Colored Sky" never meant much to Addisson as a kid, for several reasons. First and foremost, the sky was not something she thought about often, because it was not something she ever had to deal with. If the song had been "orange colored ceiling" she might have related a little more. 

But the second (and in her case more unusual) reason was because she hadn't the slightest clue what "orange" was supposed to be. It was just the ‘color’ of things she'd seen in pictures: foxes, some fruits, fire, some flowers but apparently not all of them. And she only knew this because she'd been told. If you'd asked her beforehand, she would have told you that they were all grey. 

Her situation was not entirely unique. In the history of the vault, there had been a good few kids who hadn’t developed color vision until a little later in life, and even several adults who never did. Most children seemed to start seeing in color by the time they started school though. It was nowhere near as predictable as other milestones like learning to walk and growing or losing teeth, but parents weren’t usually concerned until a child turned about ten.  
  
Addisson was nineteen, and she was one of only five people in the vault who couldn’t see colors. Three of them were children under seven, and the other was an older unmarried gentleman. Her ‘friends’ joked that the two of them should get married, since they had so much in common. She wished they wouldn’t say stupid things like that, but what could she expect? They didn’t understand what it was like to be different; they also didn’t understand what it was like not to be able to “grab a red pen for me, would you?” when someone asked unthinkingly, which soured her opinion about them even more. Yes, she was jealous. She knew it wasn’t a good look, but that was the way of things.  
  
“Don’t worry, dear,” her father told her, stroking her apparently red hair. “It’ll come in one of these days. Or it won’t, and you’ll be fine either way. You’re clever. You don’t need color to understand the world around you when you can see the shape clearly.”  
  
She tried to take it to heart, and for the most part she did. Her father’s words usually stuck with her.  
  
Part of her thought that she wouldn’t care as much about not seeing color, if she only _knew why._ Her father saw color; apparently her mother had too, so it probably wasn’t genetic. Old man Johnson said that his parents had seen color as well. There was no rhyme or reason to it, as far as anyone could tell. Sometimes Addisson got the feeling that her father knew something he wasn’t letting on, but he remained silent, and she didn’t beg him.  
  
And then he disappeared from the vault, and she’d had to chase him, and at least _one_ of her questions about “orange colored sky” was answered.  
  
It was _massive,_ that ‘sky’, that endless ceiling that hung above the impossibly large world. She didn’t know what color it was, but it was big and bright and beautiful. _Was_ it orange? She wondered.  
  
The quest to find her father was fraught with peril and exhaustion, and she was surprised to find that it didn’t distract her from thinking about ‘color’. There were so many new shapes to look at, she shouldn’t have had any _time_ to think about it. But meeting all those new people gave her some significant insights. She hadn’t expected wastelanders to be able to explain why she saw in shades of grey instead of those vibrant hues so many others did, but they ended up being a much more potent source of information than anyone back in the vault.  
  
_“Did_ the people in the vault mostly have color vision?” Moira asked curiously. “Wow, now that’s interesting! From what I’ve heard, it’s about 50-50 out here in the wasteland.”  
  
“Do _you_ have it?” Addisson asked, cocking her head as if she could tell just from looking. She wasn’t sure yet if it was socially acceptable to ask about that kind of thing out here.  
  
Luckily, Moira took no offense (not that she seemed able to, Addisson would think after a few more conversations). “Oh, yes! I’m one of the lucky ones! It makes my tinkering a lot easier, because, you know, the different colored wires mean different things. I’d probably blow myself up more often if I couldn’t see them.”  
  
A lot of other people in the town of Megaton had color vision as well. The mayor, Lucas Simms, said he’d only had it since his early 20s, which was a bit of a curious relief to Addisson, especially once Moriarty spilled the beans that her father was from the wasteland. Maybe the reason she didn’t have it yet was because of her wasteland blood. Maybe the radiation stunted vision development?  
  
Moriarty himself _didn’t_ see in color, though he didn’t seem to care. His two ‘employees’ did see in color. Lucy West didn’t. Two of the Stahl siblings did, but not the third one. Cantankerous Jericho could see colors. Walter from the water treatment plant couldn’t. Most of the town’s kids couldn’t, except Maggie. Manya and Nathan Vargas both could, and it was Manya who finally had something to say about it.  
  
“Yes, I remember when I got my colors. It was when I met Nathan. Not immediately. It doesn’t happen that fast, which is why some people don’t realize it. Traders and the like, they see so many people in a day that it could be any of twenty or thirty people." 

Addisson frowned. "What do you mean?" 

"Well plenty of people think it's just a fairytale," Manya said, "but I've seen it enough to know it's real." 

"I don't get it," Addisson said, feeling stupid. "You mean like… somebody _made_ them see color?" 

"Exactly, dear!" Manya held up her pointer finger with a victorious smile. "When you meet that special someone, your eyes just open to all the beautiful colors of the world!" 

Skeptical, Addisson raised an eyebrow at the old woman. "Special someone? That's… silly. It doesn't make sense. Not everyone that sees color is married. Like Moira." 

"No," Manya admitted. "Sometimes they just pass each other by. It’s sad, but that’s the way of things.”  
  
Even though the logical part of her brain didn’t want to believe it (and she felt like she was _mostly_ logical, being her father’s daughter), Addisson couldn’t help but think about Manya’s explanation every time she met someone new, especially if it turned out that they could see color. It was like this when she met the energetic radio DJ, Three Dog, as she was looking for clues about her father’s whereabouts.  
  
“I’ve been listening to your radio station,” she told him with a hint of shyness. He was basically a celebrity, after all. “One time you mentioned seeing trees with green leaves. Does that mean you have colors?”  
  
“Indeed I do,” he said proudly. “Picked ‘em up sometime while I was wandering, couple months before that particular incident.”  
  
“Do you know--?” Addisson started to ask, before she realized what was about to come out of her mouth and started to feel stupid.  
  
Three Dog smirked at her. “What’s on your mind, girl? Y’know I’m more than happy to share any wasteland wisdom I can.”  
  
“Oh, it’s just…” She bit her lip and looked at him with an embarrassed smile. “Have you ever heard the theory of where color vision comes from?”  
  
“I’ve heard lots of theories,” he told her, and she realized it was probably very true. It was his job to be in-the-know, after all. “What’s yours? Lay it on me.”  
  
Addisson hunched into her shoulders a bit. “It’s silly,” she admitted. “Someone in Megaton told me it happens when you meet someone special.”  
  
“Ahh, yes. The soulmate theory. Heard it a few times-- mostly from the older folk. It’s a romantic idea, that’s for sure.”  
  
“You don’t like it?” Addisson asked.  
  
Three Dog shook his head. “Nah, I think it’s kinda nice. Hopeful, and that ain’t such a bad thing in times like these. What about you? Do _you_ believe it? Do you _want_ to believe it?”  
  
“...I dunno,” Addisson said. “Maybe. I guess right now all I really want is to find my dad.”  
  
“A noble goal,” Three Dog replied with a nod. He gave her all the information he had, pointing her in the direction of Rivet City, and wished her luck-- on all fronts. As she made her way through the DC ruins, she listened to GNR, and she wondered if it was a coincidence that he played every color-based song he had.  
  
Rivet City was a neat place-- a bit vault-like in its way, and even busier than Megaton had been. There she found Doctor Li, who pointed her in the direction of the nearby Jefferson Memorial, where her father supposedly had run off to, to get a water purifier working. Addisson considered dashing off after him, but it was late and the area was swarming with super mutants, so she lingered instead, taking the time to speak with Li, who had been good friends with her parents. Until she found her dad, Doctor Li was her best source of information about her lineage.  
  
“You knew my parents before they had me, right?”  
  
“Of course,” Li said, like it was obvious. (And it probably was, to her, since Addisson’s birth had apparently ruined their long-held plans.) “I was the one who introduced them.”  
  
“You were?” Addisson asked, surprised. “So, um, did you know them before they had color vision?”  
  
Li frowned in thought. “I’m not sure,” she said. “No… _yes._ I remember your mother having difficulty differentiating between color-coded diagrams in our textbooks. I’m not sure about your father. But they both could see in color by the time we began Project Purity. Why do you ask?”  
  
“Um. Just curious,” Addisson replied. She didn’t think the studious Doctor Li would really appreciate the romantic superstition her colleague’s daughter was harboring. But she was glad to have an answer-- or at least a hint. If her parents (or her mother at least) hadn’t gotten their color vision until meeting each other, that was one more piece of evidence toward Manya’s theory.  
  
She poked around the ship for the rest of the evening, then settled into the common room for a quick night of sleep before heading off in the morning. She managed to sneak by most of the mutants outside of the memorial building, but couldn’t avoid fighting them in frighteningly close quarters once inside. It was the closest she’d ever gotten to a super mutant before, and she found herself lingering over one of their corpses. Strange creatures, she thought. Almost completely human, but huge and angry. She noticed their skin was mottled with different tones too, a little bit like the couple of ghouls she’d met.  
  
Her father wasn’t anywhere in the building, but he’d left notes about where he’d gone: off to another vault to search for data about a terraforming unit. A bit weary, Addisson set off to track him down, _again._ The map showed it would be a long walk, so she stopped in Megaton for a rest and to sell her gear, and checked in with Moira while she was there.  
  
“Interested in helping me with my book again?” the bubbly trader asked. Addisson was a bit tired of following after her father’s shadow, and thought maybe she ought to just wait for him somewhere instead of endlessly chasing him. He always seemed to have _just been_ where she was, so it made sense that he’d likely come around again. To that end, she took on a few quests for Moira, which sent her in the direction of a place called “Minefield”. The mission itself was treacherous but completed quickly enough (she didn’t bother with the crazy sniper up on the hill, other than to try to avoid him), but it was on the way back towards Megaton that something interesting happened. She happened across a dog.  
  
“Hey, boy!” she called when she realized he was friendly, which was apparently all that was needed to cement her as his new master, in his little doggy mind. They continued on together, back to Megaton, where Addisson gave Moira what she’d requested.  
  
“Ooh, what a cute dog! I love his eyes!” the inventor said, cooing over the newly christened Dogmeat.  
  
“Thanks,” Addisson said, like she’d had anything to do with his cuteness, aside from maybe not letting him get killed on the way here, which would have impacted it somewhat.  
  
Addisson and Dogmeat spent the next few days running errands for Moira and some of the other townspeople, and then headed back to Rivet City to see if her father had shown up yet. He hadn’t.  
  
“You didn’t find him at the Jefferson Memorial?” Li asked.  
  
“No,” Addisson said, just this side of a whine. “Just notes about him going to search for a… geck?”  
  
“G.E.C.K.?” Doctor Li frowned in consideration. “The Garden of Eden Creation Kit? Does he really think he can find one? Well, anyway. He hasn’t returned. I recommend tracking him down if you can.”  
  
That seemed to be her lot in life, so Addisson shrugged and dutifully began the trek to Vault 112, hoping she wouldn’t be ten minutes too late again. At least the long journey was made less lonely by virtue of her new traveling companion.  
  
When she got there, she didn’t expect to be put into some kind of virtual reality, but that was where she ended up. First thing she saw when she entered the creepy perfect little neighborhood was a dog, and she’d thought for one confusing moment that Dogmeat had somehow come with her, but the dog’s name was apparently Doc, according to a little girl named Betty, who quickly also revealed herself to be the scientist Addisson’s father was looking for.  
  
“Oh yes, I made this world. It’s my own personal playground.”  
  
“It gives me the heebie jeebies, to be honest,” Addisson said. She wasn’t worried about insulting this Braun guy; she’d already decided she didn’t like him one bit.  
  
“Your father thought so too,” Braun cheerfully admitted. “He thought the lack of color was… disquieting. Does it disturb you as well?” He seemed to hope the answer would be yes, but Addisson just raised an eyebrow and took another look around.  
  
“No idea,” she told him. “I can’t see color. I think _you’re_ what makes it creepy.”  
  
Braun cocked his little pigtailed head at her. “You’re colorblind? How peculiar.”  
  
Addisson frowned at him, not sure why she felt defensive all of a sudden, except that he rubbed her the wrong way. “It’s not _that_ weird. About half the people in the wasteland can’t see color.”  
  
“Really!” he replied, obviously intrigued. “That _is_ unusual. It was a very rare affliction, before the war. _Very_ rare. I wonder if it’s an effect of the exposure to radiation.”  
  
It wasn’t that Addisson didn’t care; she was a little intrigued by the idea that nearly everyone before the war could see color. But of all the people she could care to discuss it with, Braun was on the very bottom of the list, and so she wandered off to find some _other_ way of getting out of the freaky simulation; he was crazy, and she wasn’t going to play his games.  
  
After the simulated commies mowed down the townsfolk and left Braun to his well-earned hell, Addisson got the hell out of there and found her dad waiting for her, no longer stuck in a dog’s body. They embraced, and he didn’t criticise her for not finding him sooner; after all, as far as he knew, she was going to stay in the vault all her life.  
  
“You really thought I wouldn’t come after you? When you left without even saying goodbye?”  
  
“I had hoped you would keep yourself safe,” father said, sighing wearily. “But then I suppose you always did have an eye for adventure. Have you been well, my dear?”  
  
“Better now,” Addisson said, hugging him. “I’ve been all over this place looking for you.”  
  
Father smiled at her, proud that she’d managed so well. “Well then I suppose you had better fill me in,” he said, and they talked as they made the journey back to the purifier. She told him about all the people she’d met, often right after he’d left, and a bit shyly she mentioned the theory she’d heard.  
  
“Soulmates, you say?” He looked thoughtful, as if he were actually entertaining the thought instead of dismissing it outright, like any other scientist probably would.  
  
“Do you think it’s crazy?” she asked.  
  
“No more than everything else I’ve experienced in my life,” father replied. “It might be difficult to prove, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Your mother was a staunch believer in a higher power; if such a god exists, then maybe anything is possible.”  
  
Addisson liked the idea, now more than ever, with her father’s blessing. Was ‘anything’ really possible? She didn’t know if she believed in a god, but she’d seen so many crazy things in so short a time, it didn’t seem all that farfetched.  
  
She remembered what Braun had said though, and relayed it to her dad, who seemed curious again. “It would make sense,” he said. “In all the pre-war books I’ve read, none of them mentioned color-blindness. You would think something so prevalent would be written of, at least in passing.”  
  
“So you think it really was caused by the radiation?”  
  
Father hummed. “Perhaps. You’ve seen the ill effects it has had on our world. But why should meeting another person, or even the simple passage of time, reverse such effects? Maybe there’s more to it.”  
  
Maybe, Addisson thought, but she had to leave the question alone for the time being, with more pressing matters to attend. The wasteland needed water more than it needed answers. It needed water, and it needed it at apparently any cost.  
  
The Enclave, supposed rulers of all they saw, attacked the purifier, and Addisson’s foolish proud father sacrificed himself to keep it out of their hands-- leaving everything to her. She barely saw the scientists to safety in the desperate rush to escape and continue her father’s mission. She got them to the Brotherhood’s fortified Citadel and got her answers about the location of the G.E.C.K. all without breaking down. It was only when she met another of her father’s old friends, Star Paladin Cross, that she became unable to hold back her grief.  
  
“Your father was a very good man. You do him proud,” Cross said, looking down upon her warmly and with no judgment as Addisson wept over her loss. The world seemed so much darker now, to know that he was really gone this time.  
  
But she had a mission, and it kept her going. If she could find the G.E.C.K. she could fulfil her parents’ dreams, and that would have to do in lieu of having them with her anymore. That would be her fateful gift to them.  
  
Cross accompanied her to vault 87, through the tunnels of Little Lamplight, where all the _other_ orphaned children lived. They were suspicious of adults, but their mayor let her in on a whim, perhaps seeing that she was more like them than most ‘mungos’.  
  
“Somethin’ about you seems different,” said mayor MacCready. “You’re not _as_ mungo-ish.”  
  
Back in the day, Addisson might have guessed it was because she didn’t see colors (not that MacCready should be able to tell, just by looking), something that relegated her to a sort of immature status in the eyes of the judgmental, but knowing what she knew now she figured it must have just been a child’s intuition. But since she was thinking about it, she asked anyway, as MacCready led her back to the vault’s entrance.  
  
“So how many of you guys here can see color?”  
  
“Mm, ‘bout half,” MacCready said. He turned to her with a strict expression. “And I know what some people say, but it’s not a _mungo_ thing. A lot of us got it _way_ before even coming close to being grown-ups. The more kids we get, the earlier people get it, and I’m not kicking people out for it. You get kicked out when you turn sixteen and that’s it; I don’t care if you’ve seen color since the day you were born.”  
  
It seemed like a speech he’d said a few times before, leading Addisson to assume it was a point of contention among the residents of the caves. So the kids’ legends associated color vision with adulthood.  
  
“Do _you_ see color?” Addisson asked, curious.  
  
MacCready scowled, obviously on the defensive. “Yeah. So what? I told you, I ain’t a mungo.”  
  
She considered telling him that all the vault kids she’d known had gotten their colors early, but she didn’t think it would matter all that much to the suspicious mayor. He and his citizens had their own lore and prejudices, and they needed to work it out on their own.  
  
The path to the vault was locked behind several gates, with well-armed children guarding them. They all warned her about the monsters lurking down the hall, but they let her through at her insistence. She needed what was in there, no matter how many monsters she had to deal with to get it. Cross took the lead as they entered the dim, dingy corridors of the disused vault, lit only by emergency lights. Addisson remembered once or twice back in 101 when there’d been power failures, and her friends had been unnerved by the ‘eerie red’.  
  
“Why?” she had asked. What made red any scarier than, say, blue?  
  
“Red’s an evil color,” one of the kids had said, like she was stupid for not knowing. “And blue’s good. It’s the color of our suits.” Addisson distinctly disliked the answer. It was nonsensical. Her hair was red, she was told; was her hair evil? And would their vault suits have been less important to them if they were red?  
  
Vault 87 certainly _was_ unnerving, but she didn’t think it had anything to do with the color of the lighting. It probably had _a lot_ to do with the mutated corpses, and the super mutants.  
  
But one of the mutants surprised her. At the end of a hallway, they came across a mutant locked in an observation room. He called out to them and begged their help, and Addisson was not so prejudiced against these monsters that she wouldn’t listen to a request for aid. Cross was not enthused, but she didn’t stop her from speaking with the mutant, or breaking it free from its prison, since it offered to help them retrieve the G.E.C.K. Their goal was paramount, after all; far more important than stubbornly adhering to racist ideologies.  
  
“I thank you!” the mutant said, exuberant and humble. “I have been a prisoner here for two hundred years. I can’t begin to explain how good it feels to finally be free! Please, call me Fawkes.”  
  
‘Fox,’ Addisson thought, rather charmed. ‘Like the orange creature from the books.’ But then another detail caught her attention. “Two hundred years?” she asked, shocked. “You mean you’re from before the war?”  
  
Fawkes grimaced, although perhaps his face was just stuck that way. “My memory is not completely intact,” he admitted. “But I do remember this place when it was clean, when men and women in blue suits roamed the halls.”  
  
“So you see color!” Addisson said, excited to find another surprise piece of her puzzle in an unexpected place. If Fawkes was from before the war, was this more proof of what Braun said?  
  
Fawkes faltered, seeming briefly confused. “I’m afraid not. Only my faintest memories retain any trace of color. The horrific process which made me as I am today must have stripped it from me.”  
  
Addisson tried not to visibly wilt. Whether or not Fawkes could see in color was irrelevant to their finding the G.E.C.K. and giving the wasteland what it truly needed. “Oh, sorry,” she said simply, and put it behind her for the time being. Then she bid Fawkes to lead the way, and followed him through the treacherous halls of his brothers’ beastly den, to find the treasure hidden in its depths.  
  
The G.E.C.K. was retrieved smoothly enough, and placed in her hands with Fawkes’ repeated thanks. “Perhaps we shall meet again some day, out in the wasteland.”  
  
“Yeah, take care,” Addisson said with a closed-mouth smile just a little bit disappointed. She’d sort of wished to speak with Fawkes a little longer, to hear his thoughts on what this world had become and what could be done with it, and to speak to someone else who maybe knew what it was like to spend their whole life cooped up underground with no color and little companionship.  
  
But there was still the purifier to fix, if they could kick the Enclave out. _After_ that was done, perhaps Addisson could spend her idle time pondering the mysteries of the world, and find someone who empathized with her unique view of it all.  
  
It might have worked out well, but perhaps the Enclave already knew she had the upper hand; they ambushed her as she was about to leave the vault. The last thing she remembered, as her vision went bright white and then dark, was Dogmeat barking. He wasn’t there when she woke up in the cell, and she could only hope he was okay.  
  
‘A cell…’ she thought blearily, looking around the metal room. ‘That’s ironic. I help Fawkes escape one, only to end up in one myself. Hopefully I won’t be here for 200 years.’  
  
Even if President Eden hadn’t let her out, she would have found a way; she was determined. Luckily, she didn’t have to. The voice over the intercom wanted an audience, and she was more than happy to oblige, even though she had to fight her way there through more Enclave soldiers than she’d faced in the whole last few weeks. She rather thought she might have mowed them down even if they _hadn’t_ attacked her, just to get back at that bastard Colonel Autumn.  
  
When finally Addisson reached the President’s room, she should have been surprised that he was a robot. And she _was_ surprised, a little bit. It just didn’t seem like the kind of thing the Enclave would go for. Maybe most people didn’t know? But the reveal was a little overshadowed by a peculiar little flower sitting in a vase on the console. She stared at it, feeling a bit awed and confused.  
  
“What… is that?” she asked, brows drawn down like she could make sense of it by squinting harder.  
  
“That is a _flower,_ my girl,” Eden replied. “Our beautiful country used to be covered in them, though I’m sure you’ve seen very few out in the wastes.”  
  
“I know what flowers are,” Addisson told him, even though she had indeed not seen many in person. They’d mostly been decorative designs on pre-war items in the vault. “But what’s wrong with this one? It looks… it’s… it’s _bright.”_ She thought it might have been radioactive, but her Pip-boy’s geiger counter wasn’t clicking.  
  
Eden hummed. “Well I suppose you don’t see many yellow things out there anymore.”  
  
Addisson’s mouth fell open in shock as she continued to stare at it, feeling almost anxious. _“Yellow?_ This is yellow?” It was beautiful; easily the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen. A flower; a yellow flower.  
  
The president continued to be a little confused by her astonishment, but as soon as she was able to (mostly) tear her eyes away from the sight of the yellow flower they got back to discussing the matter at hand, which was Eden’s plan to rid the wasteland of mutation, and Addisson’s plan to not let him do that. In the end she took the vial he indicated, just because he wouldn’t open the door until she had it in hand, but she convinced him to blow himself up, so she felt it was a pretty good deal.  
  
Back out in the hallway as she made her escape, she was stunned by another flash of beauty. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest as the lasers burst from the soldiers’ rifles and the sentry bots’ mounted guns, with their usual deep sizzle and a sudden new dazzling explosion of light on each shot, a light so warm it reflected on every metal surface around them and bathed them in its glow. She’d never been so starstruck during a firefight, and if it weren’t for the help of the robots and turrets, she’d have been gunned down for sure.  
  
And then finally, she was out, out back into the cool open daylight of the undiscriminating wasteland and under its all-encompassing sun. She didn’t have a moment to appreciate it before her eye was caught by more laser flashes, and the wild laughter of a mutant that was more pleased to be alive than really anyone in the wasteland had a right to be.  
  
“My friend!” Fawkes called as he approached, boisterous and free. “You’re alright! I had thought to come rescue you, but it seems you’ve rescued yourself.”  
  
“I appreciate it anyway,” she said with a grin, and then startled and turned at the noise from behind her, of Eden keeping his word to destroy the base. ‘We shouldn’t stay here,’ is what she meant to say, but she was caught off guard again and could only gape at it, uttering a soft, “Oh my god.” It was gorgeous. It was _fire,_ and fire was orange; _this_ was _orange,_ and orange was _beautiful._ She glanced up at the sky in anticipation, but aside from being clouded with grey smoke, there was nothing new to it.  
  
“We should leave this place, my friend,” Fawkes said wisely, “before their remaining allies appear.”  
  
He had a point, and there was still a goal to attend, so Addisson wrenched her eyes away from the flames and jogged after the mutant.  
  
The landscape of the Capital Wasteland was mostly as grey as it had ever been, and Addisson spent several long moments fretting that perhaps the splashes of fantastic beauty she had seen before were hallucinations, until Fawkes dispatched a radscorpion with his gatling laser and proved that it had been real. The laser beam was still as lovely as it was deadly, as was their campfire when they settled down for the night.  
  
“Hey, Fawkes,” Addisson said, sounding much more shy than she intended. “The fire. What does it look like to you?”  
  
“Bright,” he replied from across the flames. “Lively. Opposite the deadly stillness of the vault. I find myself quite entranced by it.”  
  
“Me too,” she said, though she didn’t explain that it was the _orange_ of it that really drew her. She felt embarrassed, somehow, to be so enchanted by something so simple.  
  
They spent the night mostly quietly, as Addisson dozed on and off, waking every hour or so just to see Fawkes keeping careful watch of their surroundings. She watched him sometimes, and pretended to be asleep when he glanced over at her. Sometimes his gaze lingered, and she had to resist opening her eyes to stare right back at him. He looked lovely, bathed in the orange light. It was a shame that he couldn’t see it.  
  
She wondered why she _could,_ now. Was it really random? Was there truly no trigger? Or had she actually met someone important, someone who had opened her eyes to the beauty of the world? When Fawkes had come for her, she’d thought very briefly that it might have been him, but if he was still as blind to color as he’d been in the vault, then… Maybe someone else? She felt a little sick at the idea that it could have been one of the Enclave soldiers she’d killed, or even one of the other mutants.  
  
“Hey, Fawkes,” she said again, quietly among the soft popping of the campfire.  
  
He looked over at her and blinked. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking; he had sort of an inscrutable face when he wasn’t using his eyebrows. “You should sleep,” he said, somewhat admonishing. “I will keep watch, don’t worry.”  
  
“I can’t really sleep,” she said softly. She sat up and scooted counter-clockwise around the fire to sit a little closer to him, then hunkered down to warm her face and hands. “Just… too much running through my mind. It’s been such a long week.”  
  
“Will you tell me about it?” Fawkes asked.  
  
So she did. She told him the whole story, starting with her escape from the vault-- even though it was quite a bit longer than a week ago, by this point. She’d gotten distracted so many times by the endlessness of the wastelands. She told him more about the purifier, and about her father dying before her eyes.  
  
“So that is what keeps you from sleep?”  
  
“Well, sort of.” Addisson took a deep breath and held onto it for a moment, letting it out and feeling some weariness go with it. “I miss him. I’m angry and sad that he’s gone but I… I don’t think it’s really started to feel real yet. None of this feels real. It all feels like a crazy dream.”  
  
Fawkes nodded. “I believe I can empathize with that statement.”  
  
Addisson laughed because, yeah, she didn’t think there was anyone who could _completely_ get what she was going through, but if anyone could understand it in part, she thought it would be this strange mutant companion of hers. And yet, what really kept her brain running like a dose of psycho-jet was one of the things he apparently _couldn’t_ understand.  
  
“I started seeing in color today,” she told him without prelude. She was going to leave it at that, but as she started thinking about it, she became overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness and had to try to explain. “First it was this… this _flower._ Eden said it was yellow. I… I, I never saw something so pretty in my whole life. And then the lasers. I don’t even know what color they are, but they’re beautiful, and it’s just so _strange_ that something so deadly can be _beautiful._ And now the fire, it’s _orange,_ and I feel like my eyes are going to burn out if I keep looking at it, but I just can’t _stop.”_  
  
She glanced up and across at him, expecting him to be looking at her like she was unhinged or childishly ignorant, but he was just gazing at her ponderously. “You’ve been unable to see colors?” he asked, a little breathlessly. “I had thought it an affliction inherent to meta humans like myself. Is it an illness?”  
  
Addisson shook her head. “I guess people are just born like that, until… something happens, and then they can see color.” She gave him a helpless shrug, sorry she couldn’t explain it any better.  
  
“Hmm.” Fawkes looked not quite like he disbelieved her, but that he thought she might have gotten it slightly wrong. “I am fairly certain I could see color in my past.”  
  
“Well maybe…” Addisson started, a touch uneasy. “Someone told me it was normal for people to see in color before the war. Maybe you were… reborn? Like you are.”  
  
Fawkes made a face that she eventually realized was a smile. “Yes, perhaps. Reborn to be part of this new world. It is a less lonely thought than what I had lived with before.”  
  
Part of Addisson wanted to explain the theory behind gaining color, but Fawkes seemed comforted at the moment, and she didn’t want to make him feel any more lonely again by implying that there was something he still lacked. Maybe it was better to let him think the shades of grey were an unsolvable mystery. But he was curious by nature, it seemed, and not content to let the question remain entirely unanswered.  
  
“What _thing_ do you think happened, which caused you to begin seeing in color?” he asked.  
  
“Um, I got captured by the Enclave,” Addisson said, first listing the most easily significant of recent events. “I met the president. Bunch of kids in Little Lamplight. And I met you.”  
  
Fawkes brightened, though mostly in a metaphorical sense, as his skin still sat in marbled greys. “It would be an honor to me, if our meeting had had such an effect on you,” he said, clearly favoring the idea as idealistic, despite ignorance of the superstition. Was it that intuitive an idea? Was that how the theory was formed? Maybe people really just wanted to believe that meeting another could be so significant.  
  
“Yeah, but if that was it, then you should be seeing color too,” she told him, trying to sound matter-of-fact.  
  
Regardless of what Addisson knew to be the truth, Fawkes was undeterred. “I don’t need to see in color for our meeting to be important to me.”  
  
“I guess you’re right,” she said, drawing her legs up and laying her head across her knees. And he _was,_ of course. She’d just been so astounded by the new sensation that it had seemed to make everything else… pale, in comparison. But Fawkes’ freedom and the retrieval of the G.E.C.K. were important beyond compare, and when she wasn’t blinded by the orange glow of the firelight, she knew that.  
  
They made it to the Citadel the next day, and there were a few minor kerfuffles regarding a mutant being allowed into the base, and Cross’s report that Addisson had been captured, but all arguments and heartfelt reunions (or whatever they might have been, for she wasn’t sure the Brotherhood really liked her _all_ that much) were put aside when she told them that the Enclave had the G.E.C.K. and very little reason to hold back anymore, given that their base was destroyed.  
  
And so they fired up the Brotherhood’s giant robot and went to war against the Enclave. Retaking the purifier was easy, with that much firepower. Addisson did her best not to be distracted by the bright lasers and explosions; Fawkes helped, keeping at her shoulder and kindly reminding her to face the enemy.  
  
And he saved her life, when they finally got into the purifier and found that it needed to be restarted-- from the inside. The overdose of radiation would’ve surely killed her, but as she was considering sealing herself into the chamber, to die just as her father had, Fawkes set a large hand on her shoulder.  
  
“My dearest friend, you don’t have to throw your life away. It would be a shame, when you’ve just begun to see the world as it truly is. Please, allow me to take your place in this.”  
  
For a split second she was going to protest, forgetting that mutants were immune to radiation; she couldn’t allow someone to die in her place, especially not someone who had just begun to see the world _at all._ Fawkes still had to find whatever thing or person let him see color. But the worry only lasted a moment, and was replaced very quickly with relief.  
  
“Like in the vault? Okay, but don’t make a habit of it,” she joked, biting her lip. She was almost nauseous with the anxiety flooding out of her.  
  
It was a simple procedure, and then it was done. The room filled with mist, glowing in some color she still couldn’t see, and the system pressure returned to normal. All was well, except for the fact that Fawkes was stuck in the room until the radiation faded enough to open the door. Lyons ran off to check on her soldiers, and left Addisson to apologize to Fawkes through the intercom.  
  
“Sorry,” she said with an apologetic grin. “I hate to leave you trapped again, but thanks for doing that. You really saved… well, everyone.”  
  
“It is no hardship,” Fawkes told her, heroic and humble. “I owe my freedom to you, after all. Little could compare.”  
  
_‘And I owe you,’_ she thought, very sure now that every positive turn her life had made these past few days was due in large part to his help, not least of which were the colors that danced across her vision in firelight and in battle (and in faint smudges in other places now, as the day wore on: on a package of Salisbury Steak, and the robes of a Brotherhood Initiate. They were not as vibrant, but she was starting to recognize them). She thought maybe Manya’s rumor was _partly_ true. Perhaps colors did come from meeting someone, but that receiving them didn’t mean you were giving them in return; that it worked out that way for some, but not for others.  
  
She would have loved to give Fawkes his color-sight. He deserved it, more than most people. He deserved beauty in his life, after what he’d been through. And it pained Addisson to think that he just kept giving her things she could never grasp on her own, while she’d only done what any decent person would have.  
  
Despite that, she decided to accept his gifts with grace and appreciation, and to help him find whatever he might be looking for-- as soon as he could leave.  
  
She sat down outside the door after a little while had passed, and the radiation had faded just enough not to register on her Pip-boy. Fawkes did the same, a few minutes later, sitting instead of standing around awkwardly.  
  
“What will you do, now that your parents’ legacy is fulfilled?” Fawkes asked, apparently too new to conversation to have much grasp on the concept of small-talk.  
  
“Gosh, I dunno,” Addisson admitted. “I just hope nobody else has any big problems for me to solve. It’d be kind of nice to be able to just… explore for a while. Find more colorful stuff out there.” She laughed at herself. “Figure out what color those laser beams are. I feel so stupid for not knowing, but the books they showed us when we were kids used pre-war examples. ‘Apples are red, and trees are green, and the ocean is blue.’ None of that means anything to me.”  
  
“I recall that the vault suit is also blue,” Fawkes added, and Addisson looked at the shreds he was wearing, but she still couldn’t quite tell. Maybe it was a little _differently_ grey than usual? But it still looked grey.  
  
“I can only see the yellow edges,” she told him, tracing the shirt’s yellowish lining on the glass, and happy enough to see that. Yellow was a nice color. She wondered if it was somehow intrinsically happy, or if she just liked it because it was her first.  
  
Fawkes looked down at himself, perhaps in a vain attempt at corroborating Addisson’s claim of the yellow lining, and made sort of a curious choked humming noise deep in his throat. He held up his hand to his face and peered at it carefully. “Do you see this?” he asked, putting his hand up to the glass.  
  
“See… what?” she asked, looking at the lines on his large palm, the bluntness of his fingernails.  
  
“I seem to be very slightly… green,” he said.  
  
Addisson could feel her whole face light up in a smile. “Green?! Like trees?!” She put her hand up against the glass in a mirror of his, like she could feel the green-ness by simple proximity. “Why?” she asked, laughing joyfully. “I thought people were supposed to be brown! Well, what about me? Am _I_ green?”  
  
He looked at her, almost hesitantly, and said, “I do not think so.” After a moment of searching her (for pigment, or for something else, she wasn’t sure), he added, “but your eyes are.”  
  
“Yeah, my dad told me!” she said. “God, I wish I could see it. But… _you_ can see it! That’s awesome! Something must have.. _happened.”_  
  
_“You_ happened, my friend,” Fawkes replied, too sincere for Addisson’s own good, because she already felt she might not be able to handle all of these emotions. “If your theory is true, then I need not look any further.”  
  
She thought she definitely would have touched him if there wasn’t a barrier between them; linked her arm through his large apparently-green one, lined in blue and yellow. But all she could do was lay her head against the window and smile. “I hope it’s true,” she said. She wanted to be the reason for the good things in his life.  
  
“I am very lucky, either way,” Fawkes said, and there was little else to do, so they waited in companionable silence for the radiation to dissipate. When Li finally called in over the intercom to say that it was registering safe levels, they unlocked the door and joined each other on the same side. They spent a moment simply looking (searching each other’s faces for colors, for answers, whatever they could find), then Addisson led the way out into the main part of the memorial. Some of the techs told her to check in with Li, who gave her a rundown of how things were working so far.  
  
“I can’t believe we succeeded,” she told Addisson, looking as relieved as Addisson felt, and more cheerful than she’d yet seen her. “James would be… so proud of you.”  
  
“I hope so,” Addisson said softly, wondering if he’d be happy for her too, that she’d started seeing colors finally. A little late to share it with him, but maybe now at least she could see things the way he had-- the way he and her mother had. She wondered for a very short moment what he would have thought of Fawkes, if he would have patted him on the shoulder and thanked him for his help, and for watching out for his little girl, but she brushed the scene from her mind for the time.  
  
“It hasn’t had time to work out all the radiation yet,” Li continued, “but it’s purifying the basin almost frighteningly quickly. You should go down and try it; see the hard-earned products of your labor.”  
  
Fawkes offered to try it first, since radiation was no issue to him, but the scientists milling about promised that at least this portion here was safe to drink. Anyway, Addisson was no stranger to a _little_ radiation (anymore), so they drank together, and agreed that there wasn't a significant difference in flavor. It was what was on the inside that counted, though. The molecules or whatever made the water pure. 

"Kind of disappointed that I still can’t see if it’s blue though,” Addisson said, gazing down at the bottle they’d scooped the water up in and squinting.  
  
One of Li’s assistants laughed and informed her, “Water’s not actually blue,” before wandering off to test another batch.  
  
“What.” Addisson stared at the assistant, then down at the water again, feeling quite betrayed. She glanced at Fawkes (suit still grey) and he gave her an apologetic sort of grin.  
  
“As I recall, water is supposed to be clear,” he told her, “though the ocean appears blue from a distance.”  
  
Eventually she would stop feeling like an ignorant child, she assumed, but right then she lowered her head with an embarrassed cringe and admitted, “I thought it was a different color when it was irradiated and it would turn blue again when it was clean.” She groaned. Colors were complicated, especially when she still couldn’t see half of them.  
  
With the battle and most subsequent drama finished, and tensions just fading, they decided to climb up to the roof of the rotunda to soak in the fresh air of a new day. The plan was to take a breather and think about what came next, somewhere Lyons probably wouldn’t find them. It was too soon for a briefing on what the Brotherhood’s next great plan was, and Addisson rather thought she might like to take the time to go exploring instead of continue working tirelessly toward what was now a much less-defined goal.  
  
“Would you go with me?” she asked Fawkes, glancing over at him between bites of lunch.  
  
“I would be honored to,” he replied. “I’m sure there’s much to see, and I’m equally sure that a trusted companion would be useful.”  
  
Addisson grinned, relieved; some part of her had worried he might decide to leave now that there was nothing much at stake. “Two would be even better, I think. I need to go grab Dogmeat before we go anywhere else.”  
  
They weren’t sure exactly where they would go, but the options seemed limitless. Addisson pointed out a couple spots on her map that caught her interest, as Fawkes peered over her shoulder. She spent a while telling him about the places she’d already been, some of the crazy things she’d seen. One of the times when she glanced back at him, she flinched in surprise to note that his skin almost seemed to glow with soft yellows and oranges and a hint of some beautiful hue that stood out from their reassuring warmth in a vivid and alluring way, despite the fact that she could only barely comprehend it.  
  
“What is _that?”_ she asked, pulling his arm toward her. He seemed shocked for a moment before he began to understand what she was seeing, and he allowed her to drag him closer. “Is that what _green_ is? That pretty yellowish color?”  
  
“Am I yellowish?” he asked, amazed. “I cannot see any of the warm colors.”  
  
“Yeah, yellow and orangish,” she told him earnestly. “But mostly this ...green… sort of thing.”  
  
It was a bit of a disappointment, when she looked down at her own skin, to find that it wasn’t beautiful like Fawkes’; at best she thought it had a hint of yellow-orange, but almost too pale to notice yet. But the disappointment was nothing compared to the fascination of watching Fawkes’ arm seem to change colors before her eyes, into a purer hue, a deeper and more exotic color with every passing minute.  
  
“Gosh, you’re so pretty,” she said, biting her lip when she realized how embarrassing a thing that was to say, but completely unwilling to take it back.  
  
Fawkes didn’t seem to know what to say, a response seemingly caught in his throat by the sound of it, but he looked pleased, and he let her keep staring at his arm until she’d had enough-- which was only when the fabric of his suit caught her attention.  
  
“This one too!” she said, reaching out to run her hand over it, unselfconscious. “This is blue?! Wow…” The color went from a near-grey tone to something rivaling the beauty of Fawkes’ green skin over the course of the next half-hour, during which time Addisson unpacked everything from her bag so she could look at all the old packaged-food labels and point out every color she could see. Fawkes’ faint memory seemed to recall what some of the colors should be, so he was able to name the few she didn’t have words for.  
  
“The Nuka-Cola logo is red, I remember,” he said, peering at the label, although he didn’t seem to be able to actually see it yet.  
  
_“That’s_ red?” Addisson stared hard at the Nuka-Cola. Red, apparently. The same color as the laserbeams, as the Brotherhood scribes’ robes. But it was so nice looking! What about it was scary? What about it was evil? She grabbed at her hair, but it was too short to do more than tickle at her peripheral vision. She couldn’t see it, but she trusted what people had told her. She decided instead that the kids back in the vault had just been assholes.  
  
By that time, she could see the blue fully, and Fawkes professed to being able to faintly make out the hue. Excitedly, she gazed out at the horizon, where ‘blue’ sky and ‘blue’ ocean met. She narrowed her eyes at the scene. It looked the same as ever: grey upon grey. Li’s assistant laughed again, when they climbed down and Addisson happened to mention her disappointment.  
  
“Yeah, it’s only blue on really nice days. So… almost never.”  
  
Addisson frowned, but there was nothing she could do about it. Maybe one day they’d have a weather miracle and she’d see that promised blue water, but until then there was exploring to do which didn’t hinge on the ocean’s hue. To that end, she and Fawkes said their goodbyes to Li (who looked a bit uneasy to let Addisson leave, like there was still something else she wanted to say but didn’t dare), and went on their way, back toward Vault 101, and ultimately a freer and brighter future.  
  
The mundane was rendered exciting as they journeyed west, one or the other of them often discovering some new color, or some old item whose color was a new surprise. And even on dull grey stretches, Addisson was glad to have Fawkes at her side-- someone as new and as enthused about discovering the wasteland as she was.  
  
Finally they made it to the entrance of Vault 101, where Dogmeat always waited when he got separated from his master.  
  
“Sorry to leave you alone for so long, boy,” she said to him, bending down to ruffle his brown-tinged fur. She stopped mid-laugh as he excitedly licked her face, immediately distracted by her dog’s surprising asymmetry. One eye was a warm yellow-brown; the other, a clear pale blue. “Huh. Well now I know why people always fawned over you.”  
  
“Is it not because he is a good boy?” Fawkes asked indulgently, approaching Dogmeat carefully and letting the canine sniff his hand before rubbing his head affectionately.  
  
“That too.”  
  
And with that, with only a hint of a destination in mind, they continued west, following the setting sun. As it settled into the horizon, the sky around it took on a lovely color, streaked in searing pink and the warmest firelight orange glow.  
  
Fawkes tilted his head at her as she started to hum that old song, but didn’t protest when she just took his arm and led the way. 


End file.
